In a world where a blog is created every second does the world really need another blog? Well, it's got one.
An irregular set of postings, weaving an intricate pattern around a diverse set of subjects. Comment on culture, technology, politics and the occasional rant about life.
Alan ... in Belfast, Northern Ireland

The founder of the Church of Scientology was L. Ron Hubbard. As a teenager, I read through Hubbard’s Mission Earth series of books one summer.

The local library had about half of the ten-part series in stock, and the rest were ordered in from neighbouring branches. It’s really one single story split over ten books (each two inches thick) to save people having to reinforce their bedside tables, never mind their beds, to read it!

My memory of the plot was that it’s pretty mediocre sci-fi, told in an overly verbose manner, with some wierd passages in the middle of political intrigue and not quite enough space stuff.

“... a paralyzingly slow-moving adventure enlivened by interludes of kinky sex, sendups of effeminate homosexuals and a disregard of conventional grammar so global as to suggest a satire on the possibility of communication through language.”

At 1.2 million words long, it’s double the length of Tolstoy’s War and Peace, which I started one Christmas and didn’t finish. In the world of books, plot and characters matter more than size. Mission Earth isn’t a novel I’ll be re-reading anytime soon - or recommending to anyone else.

1 comment:

I think the Scientologists' remarkably frequent interventions in the documentary (in the guise of that entirely non-creepy fella with the shades, whose name has escaped me: perhaps they have brainwashed it out of me), not to mention their frantic counter-briefing ever since it was announced, say far more about them than any articles (like this fascinating one) could.